What Is Effective GSS Facilitation? A Qualitative Inquiry into Participants' Perceptions

Facilitation in GSS meetings is considered among the most important critical success factors for effective GSS application. A considerable amount of research on GSS facilitation has been carried out, yet this research has been biased by a facilitator’s perspective. In this study, we investigated participants’ perceptions of effective GSS facilitation. Based on transcripts of interviews with participants, we produced a comprehensive overview of tasks and behavior that participants felt were crucial for the effective facilitation of GSS meetings. Comparison and contrast with existing facilitation task taxonomies showed that our results complement existing insights and add further detail to it. Group Support Systems (GSS) are designed to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of meetings by offering a variety of tools to assist the group in the structuring of activities, generating ideas and improving group communications [6,13]. Various studies suggest that GSS may save 50-90% of person hours and project time when compared to regular meetings [14,15,17]. Yet other studies show that these benefits are not always easily achieved [9,18,19,21]: Poor process design, poor task technology fit, poor facilitation, poorly selected or conflicting participants, or technology break downs may impair well intended GSS efforts. Moreover, most GSS consist of many different tools each of which can be configured in many different ways, making it practically impossible to guarantee successful meeting preparations [2]. It is therefore not surprising that organizational groups frequently look for assistance in managing the use of GSS. This assistance often comes in the form of one or more facilitators that support GSS users in preparing and moderating GSS meetings [12]. A facilitator may diminish the complexity of the system and the time needed for training to be able to use the system [10]. More formally, the facilitation role has been defined as ‘a dynamic process that involves managing relationships between people, tasks and